


For Saints Have Hands

by rinnwrites



Series: Rough Around The Edges (Tony Stark Bingo 2018) [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A side of Pepperony, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Hands, Implied potential Stucky, Tony's Thoughts Running Wild, post-post-infinity war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 10:12:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14830340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinnwrites/pseuds/rinnwrites
Summary: Tony doesn't know what it is about hands. Perhaps it’s the way that they’re a portrait of a life, not a window to the soul like the eyes but a story of days lived, creations made, lives touched. He finds himself watching them, the hands around him.orI started rambling about hands and it turned into this.orTony Stark Bingo - A3: Free Space





	For Saints Have Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to Armadillo for being an A+ beta-reader <3

Hands. 

Tony doesn’t know what it is about hands. 

Perhaps it’s the way that they’re a portrait of a life, not a window to the soul like the eyes but a story of days lived, creations made, lives touched. He finds himself watching them, the hands around him.

Bucky has one metal and one flesh, different and uneven in every way except for their balanced movements over piano keys, playing a soft melody that seems too serene for the man producing it, the man with hands that have seen so much horror. One of them born a century ago, and the other a week-old creation of Tony’s very own, this one made, not for fighting, but with the wistful hope of living a normal life. They flex and stretch and dance over the instrument, this is a therapy, testing something new, getting a feeling for a forgotten part of a distant life. Maybe it’s a metaphor, learning the new hand, hearing the gentle song that doesn’t totally seem to fit, adjusting.

Maybe that’s where all of them are, the Avengers, gathered together in the tower, adjusting, lives intertwined in a way Tony never thought he’d see again. Old companions coming together with a cache of fresh faces, reigniting an old team in a way that felt totally new. For the first time in years, the room is full, full of so many souls and of so many hands. 

His eyes linger on Steve’s, which seem miraculously steady. Tony doesn’t remember a day that they weren’t shaking when their friends - their teammates - were gone, after the world had ended and their loved ones were taken from them. Tony remembers steadying those hands with his own. Feeling the trembling, the cold, the callouses, and putting so many unsaid words into those hands as they came together to save the world, pushing their differences and arguments aside for the sake of something far more important. Today Steve’s hands are steady and smudged with black, a charcoal pencil held in one as he captures the image of Bucky hunched over the baby grand. 

Tony wonders when those two will let inhibitions go and take each other’s hands. They’re clearly meant to be held by one another. Steve needs it, even if his hands no longer shake. 

Stephen’s, though, might never be steady. He had been brought back from death with all the rest, but the scars on his fingers remain. Pink lines, jagged and raised that follow the lines of each finger, detailing the trauma he’s endured, his fall from grace and the uphill battle that had taken him to new heights. Tony is grateful for those scars. Without them Stephen wouldn’t have been there to save him, to trade for Tony’s life and effectively save them  _ all.  _ But the man is still self-conscious of his hands, he wears gloves most of the time, but today he sits in a chair with a heavy book grasped in them, the weight of it holding one hand still while the other slowly turns the page, the thin paper tremoring along with him as it does. 

No one asks why he chooses the Avengers tower to read his books, rather than his own sanctum. He wouldn’t admit it anyway, that he’d grown to need their company, even if it was clear that they all needed his.  

Peter, in particular, had become reliant on him. Tony doesn’t know what had transpired between the two in the soul world, the in-between, but as Peter rambles to Sam about an idea for an upgrade to Redwing, Tony notices the way the teen freezes in the middle of a sentence, a gesture, to look to Stephen, as though for approval, for reassurance. It seems to be that his very presence is encouragement enough, and those hands are flying again, moving nearly as fast as his mouth. Tony’s never paid much attention to how Peter talks with his hands. He waves them around to illustrate a point, and the more excited he is, the faster and more widely they flail. He’s left-handed, and the side of his palm is always covered in ink or graphite, whether from classes at school or the copious notes he takes running experiments in Tony’s own lab.

Theyr’e small hands, with nails chewed down, a nervous habit that none of them can bring themselves to point out. The kid is too young to have been through so much and still be over-parented, even by the likes of this team. 

Tony’s attention is drawn from his protege by another hand, Pepper’s this time, slipping gracefully into his, her left intertwining with his right. She looks up at him, for once, free of concern, StarkPads abandoned on both of their laps. Her fingers are cold, always cold, but clutching them with his own, warming her cold hands has always given him a sense of purpose. If he could do nothing else right, he could still do that. After losing her and battling against death itself to bring her back, it feels more surreal than ever to look down at that smooth, pale hand, perfectly manicured fingers and the diamond glittering up at him from her finger. A promise he can’t wait to make good on, only a few weeks now and they’ll finally get to it. They are finally ready for a new chapter, one where Tony isn’t Iron Man anymore, and it doesn’t feel like abandoning something. 

He’s played his part. It shows in his own hands. 

They’ve always been tools to Tony, an extension of his mind, bringing the concepts only he could imagine to reality. That had been their purpose, or so he’d thought. That belief, like many others, had been wrong. By the end of his journey to save the universe, it had become clear that the Infinity Gauntlet was Tony’s to wield. He couldn’t do it alone, it had taken the touch of every Avenger left to contain its power, and they’d come through the other side victorious and miraculously unscathed. 

All of them, except for Tony. 

He finally lets his eyes drift from his right hand to the left. The reason his mind is so caught up on hands: the crippled remains of his own. It is burnt and withered, unfeeling, unmoving, and utterly useless. It was the cost. They’d offered to remove it, to replace it with a new one, a better one, but surprising them all, Tony refused. Something in him wanted to keep it, because it was the price. The price he paid for all of the other hands, the ones still able to reach out, to see, find, feel, and hold their loved ones close. 

All of the hands that had touched his life, in one way or another. 

He would give up anything to save those hands.


End file.
